Dallas Zoo/Associated Press - This undated photo provided by the Dallas Zoo shows Patrick. The Dallas Zoo on Monday announced they planned transfer the anti-social gorilla to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, S.C. for a more solitary existence. His response to female gorillas ranged from indifference to aggression.

DALLAS — There will be no rose ceremony for a 430-pound bachelor gorilla that failed to form any meaningful relationships with fellow apes during an 18-year stay at the Dallas Zoo.

Patrick, the 23-year-old Western lowland gorilla known for being gregarious with zoo staff and the public, while being ambivalent toward his female counterparts, has been handed his walking papers. The silverback will be transferred to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, S.C. where he’ll be allowed more solitude, according to a statement issued Monday by the Dallas Zoo.

“It’s become clear that he prefers to live a solitary life,” said Dr. Lynn Kramer, head veterinarian at the Dallas Zoo. “This move will allow Patrick to continue to thrive while creating an opportunity for our four remaining males to form a cohesive bachelor group.”

Patrick was born at the Bronx Zoo in New York City in April 1990, but maternal neglect forced him to be moved to the Toronto Zoo where he was hand-raised with another male his own age. Both gorillas arrived in Dallas at age 5 and were integrated into a small troop of one silverback and two females, before being removed to form a bachelor group together.

Despite his affability with humans and his popularity in zoo presentations about gorillas, zoo officials said Patrick’s reaction toward female apes has ranged from indifference to aggression.

No move date was announced for Patrick, a gorilla Kramer described as extremely intelligent and adept at using tools. A two-day bon-voyage celebration at the Dallas Zoo will be held Saturday and Sunday.

I DREAMED I drove on a Florida road, still and straight and empty. On either side were groves of orange trees, so that as I turned to look at them from time to time, line after line of trees stretched back endlessly from the road—their boughs heavy with round yellow fruit. This was harvest time. My wonder grew as the miles slipped by. How could the harvest be gathered?

Suddenly I realized that for all of the hours I had driven (and this was how I knew I must be dreaming) I had seen no other person. The groves were empty of people. No other car had passed me. No houses were to be seen beside the highway. I was along in a forest of orange trees.

But at last I saw some orange pickers. Far from the highway, almost on the horizon, lost in the vast wilderness of unpicked fruit, I could discern a tiny group of them working steadily. And many miles later I saw another group. I could not be sure, but I suspected that the earth beneath me was shaking with silent laughter at the hopelessness of their task. Yet the pickers went on picking.

The sun had long passed its zenith, and the shadows were lengthening when, without any warning, I turned a corner of the road to see a notice “Leaving NEGLECTED COUNTY—Entering HOME COUNTY.” The contrast was so startling that I scarcely had time to take in the notice. I had to slow down, for all at once the traffic was heavy. People by the thousands swarmed the road and crowded the sidewalks.

Even more startling was the transformation in the orange groves. Orange groves were still there with orange trees in abundance, but not, far from being silent and empty, they were filled with the laughter and singing of multitudes of people. Indeed it was the people we noticed rather than the trees. People—and houses.

I parked the car at the roadside and mingled with the crowd. Smart gowns, neat shoes, showy hats, expensive suites, and starched shirts made me a little conscious of my work clothes. Everyone seemed so fresh and poised and happy.

“Is it a holiday?” I asked a well-dressed woman with whom I fell in step.

She looked a little startled for a moment, and then her face relaxed with a smile of gracious condescension.

“You’re a stranger, aren’t you?” she said, and before I could reply, “This is Orange Day.”

She must have seen a puzzled look on my face, for she went on, “It is so good to turn aside from one’s labors and pick oranges one day of the week.”

“But don’t you pick oranges every day?” I asked her.

“One may pick oranges at any time,” she said, “We should always be ready to pick oranges, but Orange Day is the day which we devote especially to orange picking.”

I left her and made my way farther among the trees. Most of the people were carrying a book bound beautifully in leather, and edged and lettered in gold. I was able to discern on the edge of one of them the words, “Orange Picker’s Manual.”

By and by, I noticed around one of the orange trees that seats had been arranged, rising upward in tires from the ground. The seats were almost full—but, as I approached the group, a smiling well-dressed gentleman shook my hand and conducted me to a seat.

There, around the front of the orange tree, I could see a number of people. One of them was addressing all the people on the seats and, just as I got to my seat, everyone rose to his feet and began to sing. The man next to me shared with me his songbook. It was called “Songs of the Orange Groves.”

They sang for some time, and the song leader waved his arms with a strange and frenzied abandon, exhorting the people, in the intervals between the songs, to sing more loudly.

I grew steadily more puzzled.

“When do we start to pick oranges?” I asked the man who had loaned me his book.

“It’s not long now.” He told me. “We like to get everyone warmed up first. Besides, we want to make the oranges feel at home.” I thought he was joking—but his face was serious.

After a while, another man took over form the song leader and, after reading two sentences from his well-thumbed copy of the Orange Picker’s Manual, began to make a speech. I wasn’t clear whether he was addressing the people or the oranges.

I glanced behind me and saw a number of groups of people similar to our own group gathering around an occasional tree and being addressed by other speakers. Some of the trees had no one around them.

“Which trees do we pick from?” I asked the man beside me. He did not seem to understand, so I pointed to the trees round about.

“This is our tree,” he said, pointing to the one we were gathered around.

“But there are too many of us to pick from just one tree,” I protested. “Why, there are more people than oranges!”

“But we don’t pick oranges,” the man explained. “We haven’t been called. That’s the Head Orange Picker’s job. We’re here to support him. Besides we haven’t been to college. You need to know how an orange thinks before you can pick it successfully—orange psychology, you know. Most of these folk here,” he went on, pointing to the congregation, “have never been to Manual School.”

“Manual School,” I whispered. “What’s that?”

“It’s where they go to study the Orange Picker’s Manual,” my informant went on. “It’s very hard to understand. You need years of study before it makes sense.”

“I see,” I murmured. “I had no idea that picking oranges was so difficult.”

The speaker at the front was still making his speech. His face was red, and he appeared to be indignant about something. So far as I could see there was rivalry with some of the other “orange-picking” groups. But a moment later a glow came on his face.

“But we are not forsaken,” he said. “We have much to be thankful for. Last week we saw THREE ORANGES BROUGHT INTO OUR BASKETS, and we are now completely debt-free from the money we owed on the new cushion covers that grace the seats you now sit on.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” the man next to me murmured. I made no reply. I felt that something must be profoundly wrong somewhere. All this seemed to be a very roundabout way of picking oranges.

The speaker was reaching a climax in his speech. The atmosphere seemed tense. Then with a very dramatic gesture he reached two of the oranges, plucked them from the branch and placed them in the basket at his feet. The applause was deafening.

“Do we start on the picking now? I asked my informant.

“What in the world do you think we’re doing?” he hissed. “What do you suppose this tremendous effort has been made for? There’s more orange-picking talent in this group than in the rest of Home County. Thousands of dollars have been spent on the tree you’re looking at.”

I apologized quickly. “I wasn’t being critical,” I said. “And I’m sure the speaker must be a very good orange picker—but surely the rest of us could try. After all, there are so many oranges that need picking. We each have a pair of hands. And we could read the Manual.”

“When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you’ll realize that it’s not as simple as that,” he replied. “There isn’t time, for one thing. We have our work to do, our families to care for, and our home to look after. We….”

But I wasn’t listening. Light was beginning to break on me. Whatever these people were, they were not orange pickers. Orange picking was just a form of entertainment for their weekends.

I tried one or two more of the groups around the trees. Not all of them had such high academic standards for orange pickers. Some held classes on orange picking. I tried to tell them of the trees I had seen in Neglected County, but they seemed to have little interest.

“We haven’t picked the oranges here yet,” was their usual reply.

The sun was almost setting in my dream and, growing tired of the noise and activity all around me, I got in the car and began to drive back again along the road I had come. Soon, all around me again were the vast and empty orange groves.

But there were changes. Some things had happened in my absence. Everywhere the ground was littered with fallen fruit. And as I watched, it seemed that before my eyes the trees began to rain oranges. Many of them lay rotting on the ground.

I felt there was something so strange about it all, and my bewilderment grew as I thought of all the people in HOME COUNTY.

Then booming through the trees there came a voice which said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers….”

And I awakened—for it was only a dream!

============================

the context of mountain man was written in a flash of enlightenment during a church service. i had not read the parable of the orange tree since 1992 but after i had finished mountain man, i realized that there were similarities between what i had just written and "that one thing i read back in seminary". well it was the parable of the orange tree and i googled it out, found it and re-read it... pretty poignant stuff.

"mountain man"

there is a man standing at the base of a mountainhe shouts to the hill in front of the mountainhe shouts to the treeline that starts at the base of the mountainhe does not shout at the mountain

though the forest creatures see himthey wonder why he does not go up the mountain.the trees wonder why he does not wander into themthe peak of the mountain callsthe clouds beckon... the sky beckons

and the clouds part and he sees the full mountainand he falls down at the revelation

so the man at the base of the mountain cries outso the man at the base of the mountain calls outhe calls to the God of the mountainhe calls out to the sides of the mountain

he calls to the stream that runs out of the mountainhe calls to the mountainthe mountain sees himand the mountain hears himyet he does not walk up the mountain

he has some couragefor he recognizes the journeyhe has mapped out the trail that leads up the mountainhe is drawing maps to travel up the mountain

he is calling out to the mountain telling it to hearken to his mapshe is building vessels to collect spring waterhe is fortifying his shoes, his shirt, his toolsand yet the mountain pathways gather pine needles

the mountain does not moveit is before the manand the man has gathered a crowdthe mountain paths and trails go un-walked

and the mountain is talland the mountain is majesticand the mountain is all that is before themand the mountain is alone

and the man builds a forestry stationhe creates pamphlets about mountain safetyhe sells walking sticks and postcardshe has services about mountain life

and other people come to hear himand they pitch their tentsand they also dress in mountain gearand they eat campfire food

the campfire lifecamping outmountain lifethe winds of the hillshillside mornings

the children of the mountain people growthey have built housesthey build their houses so all windows face up the mountainthey have mountain community center services

one day a little boy is playing alonehe looked up the mountainat the base he noticed the trail-headand a little rabbit eating a leaf

he left his mountain man play-setand he got up and chased the bunnythe bunny ran into the treelineat the base of the mountainand he followed itsetting foot on the trail that led up the mountain

typed on the beginning of autumn for the God of the mountain during church service at white horse christian centerpauly hartsept 22 2013

Several indications suggest that Navy Yard killer Aaron Alexis may have been taking psychiatric drugs, bringing into focus once again the clear connection between anti-depressants and mass shootings.

With the motive behind yesterday’s tragic rampage still unknown, speculation has centered around Alexis’ personal life.

The Associated Press reports that Alexis, “had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems,” which included paranoia, sleep disorder and hearing voices in his head.

According to his father, Alexis suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his harrowing experiences during his involvement in rescue operations on 9/11.

SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) drugs are the most common form of treatment for PTSD, with Paroxetine being one of the most prescribed medications for this purpose. Paroxetine was also listed as the number 3 top violence-causing drug by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP).

The study, which is based on FDA figures, reveals that antidepressants Pristiq (desvenlafaxine), Paxil (paroxetine) and Prozac (fluoxetine), all appear in the list of the top ten violence-causing drugs.

We also know that Alexis “blacked out” during a violent confrontation in 2004 when he shot out the tires of vehicles belonging to construction workers parked next to his home. Black outs are also acommon side effect of SSRI drugs.

We’ve also learned that Alexis had “anger management” issues. SSRI drugs including Paroxetine, Prozac and Zoloft are also routinely prescribed to treat anger issues.

These circumstances indicate that Alexis was almost certainly taking SSRI drugs at some point over the last decade, although whether he was on them during yesterday’s deadly shooting remains to be seen.

Anti-depressant drugs, or SSRI’s, have been linked with numerous mass shootings in recent history.

Earlier this year it emerged that Aurora shooter James Holmes was taking “sertraline, a generic version of Zoloft used to treat depression, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder and Clonazepam, usually prescribed to treat anxiety and panic attacks,” according to the L.A. Times.

Zoloft is the same psychotropic drug that Columbine killer Eric Harris was taking before his rampage.

The connection between Zoloft and violent outbursts is well documented. Countless studies identify Zoloft as being responsible for more than 1,000 suicides and hundreds of episodes of mania and aggression.

As CCHR documents, psychiatric drugs have been involved in at least 31 different school shootings and other massacres over the last 25 years. In addition to Holmes and Harris, mass shooters who were on SSRI drugs include;

America’s addiction to psychotropic drugs is out of control and growing every year.

According to a London Guardian report, “(subscriptions) for benzodiazepines – the class of anti-anxiety drugs including Xanax, Valium, Ativan, and Klonopin – have gone up 17% since 2006 to 94m annually, New York magazine notes. Generic Xanax, which goes by the name alprazolam, has become 23% more popular in that same timeframe “making it the most prescribed psycho-pharmaceutical drug and the 11th-most prescribed overall, with 46m prescriptions written in 2010.”

Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health Dr. Peter R. Breggin has testified in approximately 100 trials since 1976 about the clear connection between psychiatric drugs and outbursts of violence. Breggin asserts that there is a definite “causal relationship between antidepressant drugs and the production of suicide, violence, mania and other behavioral abnormalities.”

However, in the aftermath of every mass shooting, the establishment media routinely blames the massacre on guns, despite gun-related homicides showing a 49% decrease since 1993, and pays little or no attention to how SSRI drugs are fueling unnecessary violence.

GRAY, LA (WGNO) – A student at H. L. Bourgeois High School accused of using a mobile phone app to simulate shooting his classmates was booked and jailed in Terrebonne Parish.

The app is called “The Real Strike” and simulates a first person shooter game, except the battleground is real life.

“You can’t ignore it,” says Major Malcolm Wolfe. “We don’t know at what time that game becomes reality.”

Wolfe office says a 15-year-old was arrested after posting a video on YouTube using the Real Strike app to shoot other kids at school, “He said it was a result of him being frustrated and tired of being bullied. He said that he had no intentions of hurting anybody. We have to take all threats seriously and we have no way of knowing that without investigating and getting to the bottom of it.”

He says the student was arrested for terrorizing and interference of the operation of a school.

“With all the school shooting we’ve had in the United States, it’s just not a very good game to be playing at this time,” according to Wolfe.

Parents told investigators their son does not have access to any fire arms.

President Barack Obama accelerated firearm shipments to al-Qaeda on the very same day he demanded more gun control in the wake of the D.C. Navy Yard shooting.

Obama waived a provision in federal law specifically designed to keep the U.S. government from supplying firearms to terrorists such as al-Qaeda, according to the Washington Examiner.

Citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, the president declared Monday that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”

No longer will Obama need to rely on theCIA to give free guns to Islamic extremists in Syria; now he will make the transfers openly with this “transparent government” initiative.

On the same day as his overt approval for arms to al-Qaeda, Obama announced thathe is drafting executive orders for more gun control.

“We have gone about implementing the executive actions that were part of the president’s plan to take action to reduce gun violence,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the Navy Yard shooting. “Obviously, he continues to support measures taken by Congress — that could be taken by Congress to reduce gun violence in a common-sense way, like improving our background-check system.”

In essence, Obama will act on his own to force firearm restrictions onto the American people and if Congress would like to join him later, they are welcome to do so.

He already has allies in Congress drooling to disarm law-abiding citizens.

“When will enough be enough?” Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cali.) asked. “Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country.”

“We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”

Yet contrary to that statement, Feinstein approves of Obama’s plan for war in Syria, which would place the U.S. military on the side of the Al-Qaeda rebels who are beheading Syrian Christians with cinder blocks and machetes.

Obama is not content with the rebels only being armed with knives, however, as his administration prepares to further arm terrorists with automatic weapons which he does not believe law-abiding citizens should own.

Federal agencies are already drying up gun supplies in America with massive firearm and ammunition purchases which drive private gun owners out of the market.

This is essentially back-door gun control.

In a recent purchase, the Department of Defense bought millions of rounds of Soviet 7.62x39mm ammo and nearly 600,000 AK-47 magazines.

AK-47s, which are chambered for the 7.62x39mm round, are commonly used by American gun owners but not the American military.

They are also used regularly by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world.

In his “effort” to reduce violence, Obama is arming Al-Qaeda extremists while disarming peaceful Americans.

Not a lot of people know this, but Benedict XVI is not the real Pope. The red carpets, the gratuitous use of Prince Philip, Susan Boyle's warbling--these were all hollow, superficial gestures that unfortunately succeeded in entrenching the power of the heretic and impostor Joseph Ratzinger, side by side with his fellow fraud Mrs. Elizabeth Windsor-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In fact, the true Pope lives in a town of 130 people in rural Kansas. He is Pope Michael I, and he is unhappy that Benedict gets all the golf-buggies when he can't even get everyone to call him by his proper pope-name.

“A lot of people around the town address me as Pope Michael, but some still call me David. Yes, true... I'd prefer to be called Pope Michael, but many people find it strange,” Pope Michael admits, not long after I'd phoned him up for a chat.

There can be no doubting his veracity: his email address is prefixed: "thetruepope," he runs the small website vaticaninexile.com, and he signs himself off: "+ Michael pp." Elected in 1990, the 50-year-old Pope has tended his small but global flock for 20 years now. Being Pope is his full-time job: “I was lucky enough to have parents who were financially well-off enough to allow me to go about my Papal duties without the need for a full-time job. We've set up a press to print out-of-publication Catholic books, but that's more to help with the costs of our network."

Here's how it works: Brought up in a devoutly Catholic family, from boyhood, David Bawden felt that he had a calling to the priesthood. When he came of age, he took up that calling. But after a stint at foreign seminaries under the Pius X order, disillusioned with what he viewed as the confused and heretical teachings of the latter-day church, unordained, he returned home and wrote a book with a woman called Teresa Stanfill-Benns, which aimed to answer the question: "Will The Catholic Church Survive The Twentieth Century?" The conclusion? By virtue of their heresies, the Roman lineage had vacated the Papacy. There was no fricken' Pope! Conclusion: elect a Pope! Conclusion to the conclusion? Hold a papal conclave.

So it was that a small band of supporters gathered together to search for a man who would uphold and repair the true Catholic tradition that they had watched degenerate over their lifetimes. They were pissed about things like Vatican II: Paul VI's 1963 series of reforms that generally eased the church into the liberal climes of, say, the 18th century. This was to be overturned, as was pretty much everything that wasn't deeply, profoundly conservative.

In the past, Bawden/Michael has railed against Pope John Paul II while holding mass in front of semi-naked Papua New Guinean tribespeople. These were and are theologians who think that, really, it all started to go wrong when they began allowing the mass to be said in English instead of Latin. It's not only the Baptist and Mohammedan traditions that have a lockdown on fundamentalism, you know.

So the election went smoothly. The seven needed to elect a pope gathered in a small room. July 16, 1990: the traditional message that has been echoed for 2,000 years went out from Belvue, Kansas: "habemus papam" or, "we have a Pope!" Imagine that--you're barely thirty--one day you can't even make priest and the next you end up Pope! It's like being a ballboy at Wimbledon, then getting promoted to Roger Federer.

He'd won, although he batted me down when I asked if he had any Papal rivals, “It's not really an 'election,'" he said, "You don't 'run' for Pope.” Over the phone, the Pope Michael sounds meek at times, almost tremulous--a pinched, high-pitched voice and a clipped manner of response. He is, of course, celibate. It's always an awkward question to ask, but it had to be done. He also refudiates birth control, as well as every single Pope since the 1958 election of the heretic Angelo Roncalli, whose heresies apparently included “being soft on Communism.” “The best of the Vatican line, to me, would be John Paul I--simply because he ruled for the shortest time. It's difficult to choose between them, because they are all heretics.”

VICE: So would you say you're infallible, as Popes are meant to be?The Pope: Oh, definitely. It's in the teachings. The Pope's edicts are true. There can't be one church at the time of Christ, another a thousand years later, and another today. There is only one true interpretation of scripture.

I see. So it's not like you just always have to win at snooker, or something?

Oh no! Nothing like that. It's only in matters of scripture.

Is the Vatican aware of your existence? Have you ever corresponded with them?I sent a notice of excommunication of Pope John Paul II to The Vatican in 1982. Obviously, I didn't hear back from him. Also, when I was first elected in 1990, one of the newspapers did a story about it and they phoned up the Vatican for comment. Obviously, it was just a typical "no comment" situation.

[Here the interview veered away from the standard Q & A format. The remainder contains choice quotes from the conversation selected by the author, as well as brief interjections and commentary. - Ed.]

If he held the reins in Rome, he assures us, the pedo-priests would've had their chips by now. He quotes a 16th Century Pontiff who decreed the punishment for pedophilia to be death, and a 1917 bill about the instant excommunication of sex-abusing priests.

“I hold prayer meetings, I perform the stations of the cross... And of course there's a lot of people interested in the Church around the world--and keeping up with all that correspondence takes a lot of my time.”

Twenty years in, he's still only 50 and has a lifetime of Popery ahead of him. Although, just in case, his organization has plans in place for a fresh papal conclave should he pass away suddenly.

“Definitely. It will run like any normal conclave. Who will succeed me? Well, I don't know, and to be honest, it's forbidden to discuss the matter of a successor to the present Pope before his death.”

That's a lot like Big Brother nominations, I'd suggest. I wondered what the best part about being pope is.

“The best thing about being Pope? Probably that I can never be outside of the church. The teachings say that the Pope can never be exiled from God.”

And who, after all, would want to be exiled from God? I like the Pope. The Pope stokes hope.

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Battle Creek Police make a bust at the Masonic Temple, sources have described as a drug fueled sex party. Police sources describe the scene on Michigan Avenue out of control, and arrests were made. Now, investigators are working with city leaders to make sure another out of control sex party, doesn't happen again. It's a secretive organization, sitting right next door to the Battle Creek Police and county courthouse. "Thank you for calling the beautiful Masonic Temple. For renting our facility, please call Charlie..." says the automated voice message, when you call the Masonic Lodge. We make a call to Charlie, and told him what police sources described to us as an out of control sex party scene. Sources told us the first officer to walk inside, was shocked to find a couple performing a lewd sex act, along with drugs, multiple nude women and men videotaping it all behind these closed doors. Charlie said Freemasons don't go on camera, but told Newshchannel 3 they did not know about the multiple arrests that were made. He says those who paid $900 to rent this space, told him it was going to be a dancing party. He adds his is not what they stand for, and suspended all future parties. Police say they plan to find any city code violations, not only against those renting the facility, but also those who run the building.

Battle Creek police ordered people to leave the Masonic Temple at 133 E. Michigan Ave. early Sunday after finding several women dancing nude. Officers were called at 2:19 a.m. about a possible fight and when they entered the private party found five women dancing naked on a stage. They were told to dress and leave.

Do you get all hot and bothered when you're sitting inside a temple? Because, if so, you might want to connect with the group that allegedly had a "drug fuelled sex party" inside a Masonic temple in Michigan recently. They might be your spirit guides.

Don't let anyone tell you they don't party hard in Michigan. This story, alerted to us by Raw Story, is almost too hard to believe. The Battle Creek Enquirer reports police officers in Battle Creek, Michigan responded to calls about a fight at the Masonic temple around 2:19 a.m. last Sunday. But when the police arrived the physical altercations taking place were not violent. Take it away, News Channel 3:

Sources told us the first officer to walk inside, was shocked to find a couple performing a lewd sex act, along with drugs, multiple nude women and men videotaping it all behind these closed doors.
The Enquirer says five women were dancing onstage. All were ordered to get dressed and leave.

Maybe there's a reasonable explanation, though. Charlie, a representative for the Masonic Temple who refused to be identified further, told News Channel 3 that a group paid $900 to rent the building for a "dance party" that night. He also denied accusations that this was not the first time a sex party had occurred behind the organizations doors. The Masonic temple where the alleged drug fuelled sex party took place is next door to the Battle Creek police department and across the street from the county courthouse.

No other reports exist about the story, and what drugs were present is never made clear. But, still: a group of people were allegedly busted videotaping a swinging, stoned orgy inside a Masonic temple in Battle Creek, Michigan.

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Battle Creek Police make a bust at the Masonic Temple, sources have described as a drug fueled sex party. Police sources describe the scene on Michigan Avenue out of control, and arrests were made. Now, investigators are working with city leaders to make sure another out of control sex party, doesn't happen again. It's a secretive organization, sitting right next door to the Battle Creek Police and county courthouse. "Thank you for calling the beautiful Masonic Temple. For renting our facility, please call Charlie..." says the automated voice message, when you call the Masonic Lodge. We make a call to Charlie, and told him what police sources described to us as an out of control sex party scene. Sources told us the first officer to walk inside, was shocked to find a couple performing a lewd sex act, along with drugs, multiple nude women and men videotaping it all behind these closed doors. Charlie said Freemasons don't go on camera, but told Newshchannel 3 they did not know about the multiple arrests that were made. He says those who paid $900 to rent this space, told him it was going to be a dancing party. He adds his is not what they stand for, and suspended all future parties. Police say they plan to find any city code violations, not only against those renting the facility, but also those who run the building.

The Masonic temple in Battle Creek, Mich., on E. Michigan Ave. was the scene of an alleged sex party.
So that’s what goes on behind closed doors!

Cops in Battle Creek., Mich., busted an alleged drug-fueled sex party at a Masonic temple early Sunday — and it’s apparently not the first time one took place there, according to CBS affiliate WWMT.

The secret sessions reportedly occurred while people rented the space, the station said.

A spokesman for the local Freemasons couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday, but a man in charge of renting the facility told WWMT that he thought the temple was going to be used for a dance party — not as a hall for horndogs.

He said he checked on the space around 1 a.m. and saw nothing suspicious.
But cops ended up charging in around 2:19 a.m. to respond to a possible fight. Instead, they found several women dancing nude, the Battle Creek Enquirer reported.

One officer reportedly walked into the facility and found a man and woman engaged in a sex act — just as the entire escapade was being videotaped.

It’s not clear what type of drugs were allegedly recovered.

After multiple arrests were made, the Freemasons, a fraternal organization steeped in tradition, have suspended future parties there.

freemasonsWWMT in Southwestern Michigan has a strange story which seems to be beyond their abilities to report:

Battle Creek Police make a bust at the Masonic Temple, sources have described as a drug fueled sex party. Police sources describe the scene on Michigan Avenue out of control, and arrests were made.

It’s a secretive organization, sitting right next door to the Battle Creek Police and county courthouse. “Thank you for calling the beautiful Masonic Temple. For renting our facility, please call Charlie…” says the automated voice message, when you call the Masonic Lodge.

Sources told us the first officer to walk inside, was shocked to find a couple performing a lewd sex act, along with drugs, multiple nude women and men videotaping it all behind these closed doors.

We make a call to Charlie, and told him what police sources described. Charlie said Freemasons don’t go on camera, but told Newshchannel 3 they did not know about the multiple arrests.

August 22, 2013 - According to leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) that Die Zeit obtained, IT experts figured out that Windows 8, the touch-screen enabled, super-duper, but sales-challenged Microsoft operating system is outright dangerous for data security. It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a built-in backdoor. Keys to that backdoor are likely accessible to the NSA – and in an unintended ironic twist, perhaps even to the Chinese.

The backdoor is called “Trusted Computing,” develop

ed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group, founded a decade ago by the all-American tech companies AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Its core element is a chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and an operating system designed for it, such as Windows 8. Trusted Computing Group has developed the specifications of how the chip and operating systems work together.

Its purpose is Digital Rights Management and computer security. The system decides what software had been legally obtained and would be allowed to run on the computer, and what software, such as illegal copies or viruses and Trojans, should be disabled. The whole process would be governed by Windows, and through remote access, by Microsoft.

Now there is a new set of specifications out, creatively dubbed TPM 2.0. While TPM allowed users to opt in and out, TPM 2.0 is activated by default when the computer boots up. The user cannot turn it off. Microsoft decides what software can run on the computer, and the user cannot influence it in any way. Windows governs TPM 2.0. And what Microsoft does remotely is not visible to the user. In short, users of Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 surrender control over their machines the moment they turn it on for the first time.

It would be easy for Microsoft or chip manufacturers to pass the backdoor keys to the NSA and allow it to control those computers. NO, Microsoft would never do that, we protest. Alas, Microsoft, as we have learned from the constant flow of revelations, informs the US government of security holes in its products well before it issues fixes so that government agencies can take advantage of the holes and get what they’re looking for.

Experts at the BSI, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the Federal Administration warned unequivocally against using computers with Windows 8 and TPM 2.0. One of the documents from early 2012 lamented, “Due to the loss of full sovereignty over the information technology, the security objectives of ‘confidentiality’ and ‘integrity’ can no longer be guaranteed.”

Elsewhere, the document warns, “This can have significant consequences on the IT security of the Federal Administration.” And it concludes, “The use of ‘Trusted Computing’ technology in this form ... is unacceptable for the Federal Administration and for operators of critical infrastructure.”

Another document claims that Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 is “already” no longer usable. But Windows 7 can “be operated safely until 2020.” After that other solutions would have to be found for the IT systems of the Administration.

The documents also show that the German government tried to influence the formation of the TPM 2.0 specifications – a common practice in processes that take years and have many stakeholders – but was rebuffed. Others have gotten what they wanted, Die Zeit wrote. The NSA for example. At one of the last meetings between the TCG and various stakeholders, someone dropped the line, “The NSA agrees.”

Rüdiger Weis, a professor at the Beuth University of Technology in Berlin, and a cryptographic expert who has dealt with Trusted Computing for years, told Die Zeit in an interview that Microsoft wanted to completely change computing by integrating “a special surveillance chip” in every electronic device. Through that chip and the processes of Windows 8, particularly Secure Boot, “users largely lose control over their own hardware and software.”

But wouldn’t it contribute to higher levels of security? Certain aspects actually raise the risks, he said. For example, during production, the secret key to that backdoor is generated outside the chip and then transferred to the chip. During this process, copies of all keys can be made. “It’s possible that there are even legal requirements to that effect that cannot be reported.” And so the TPM is “a dream chip of the NSA.”

Perhaps even more ominously, he added: “The other realistic scenario is that TPM chip manufactures don’t sit within reach of the NSA, but in China....”

Apple phased out the surveillance chips in 2009. Linux doesn’t comply with the standards, and Linux machines cannot use the technology. Microsoft defended itself the best it could. The TPM is activated by default because most users accept defaults, it said. If users would have to activate the functions themselves, many users would end up operating a less secure system. And of course, government regulations that would require that users have the option to opt in or out would be unwise.

Instead, hardware manufactures could build machines with the chips deactivated, Microsoft said. If you want to have control over your computer, that’s what you’d have to buy. Another option would be to switch to Linux machines, something that the city government of Munich has started 10 years ago; the changeover should be complete before the year is up. This aspect of the NSA debacle cannot possibly be twisted into bullish news for Microsoft.

China is the promised land for our revenue-challenged tech heroes: over a billion consumers, economic growth several times that of the US, and companies splurging on IT. Layer the “cloud” on top, and China is corporate nirvana: a high-growth sector in a high-growth country. Or was nirvana, now that the NSA’s hyperactive spying practices have spilled out.